The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 102

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 102

After checking the auction results, I grinned widely.

“Yes!”

And when I checked the bid amounts for 2nd and 3rd place, I couldn’t hide the smile spreading across my face.

“Hehe, hehehe…!”

How did it turn out like this?

Besides me, three other people had bid on the building.

640 million, 650 million, and 678 million won.

Unlike the auction houses I’d seen in fantasy novels, real estate auctions weren’t a system where you could keep raising bids after hearing other amounts.

It was a psychological warfare where whoever wrote the highest amount in one go would take it.

If I had bid 640 million won as I originally planned, the building would have gone to the person who bid 678 million.

How regretful would it have been if I hadn’t listened to Grandmother Heo Sunnam?

When the minimum price was 800 million, no one seemed interested, but apparently everyone was waiting for the auction price to drop while keeping their nerves on edge.

“Everyone, we did it! I’m a building owner now!”

I immediately ran to the clinic.

Today was a day off, but I couldn’t contain the overwhelming joy that surged through me.

“Wow, you won the bid?”

Seo Inae asked in surprise.

“Amazing! Congratulations!”

“Then we don’t have to move?”

Seol Yuhui and Gong Nari, who were in the treatment room, also came out to the waiting room and made a fuss.

“We’re not moving! We’ll use the 2nd and 3rd floors for the clinic too, hahaha!”

I high-fived the congratulating staff but still couldn’t calm my excitement.

Hwang Sanghun was seeing patients, and there were patients around, so I should be quiet…

But this is too great!

“Ms. Heo Sunnam, it’s me. This is Hanyewon, the director of Seongsoo Oriental Medicine Clinic. I did as you advised yesterday, and I won by a margin of 3.5 million won. Thank you so much!”

I called Grandmother Heo Sunnam and repeatedly expressed my gratitude.

– Oh, really? You bought it so cheap! Congratulations!

“It’s all thanks to you, Ms. Heo Sunnam. Thank you so much!”

– What did I do? You bought it all with your own money!

It was amusing even while being happy.

How anxious had I been until yesterday?

Both my calculations and intuition pointed in the same direction.

But I wasn’t 100% certain about participating in the auction or following Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s advice to bid 40 million won more than the minimum price.

When I first heard the news that the building was going to auction, anxiety came first, and I was secretly worried until yesterday.

But now that I’d actually won the bid, it was hard to contain the satisfaction of owning a building.

‘Sigh… There was a time when I desperately wanted just one room in an officetel.’

Thinking of my college days when I struggled to save money made my heart swell.

‘Come to think of it, I never owned a building even in the martial arts world.’

I liked even more that it was a building I bought with my own money and judgment, not something borrowed through someone’s charity.

In terms of square footage, even combining all four floors would be smaller than the pavilion I stayed in at the Tang Family, but thinking that my name would be on the property deed made my heart flutter. It was a different dimension of satisfaction.

– I’m satisfied as long as our director doesn’t go anywhere and stays right there!

I repeatedly expressed gratitude not only to Grandmother Heo Sunnam, but also to Hwang Sanghun and Seo Inae who worried with me.

If they hadn’t stopped me at first, I might have bought it for over 300 million won more.

Everything worked out well, but thinking about how I had only courage without knowing anything made me dizzy.

“Director, should I tell Mr. Song Wonjong on the 2nd floor too?”

But Seol Yuhui stopped me as I was grinning broadly.

Mr. Song Wonjong?

Right, there was someone who had been waiting for the auction results as anxiously as I had.

He ran a restaurant on the 2nd floor and hadn’t been able to eat comfortably for a single day, worrying about not getting his deposit back.

“Yes. Tell him quickly. That he doesn’t need to worry about his deposit.”

“I’ll go down and come back!”

Seol Yuhui hurriedly ran downstairs.

Since this incident happened, he had visited the clinic frequently, so the staff had become quite familiar with his face.

A moment later.

About 3 minutes passed? Song Wonjong came up to the clinic with Seol Yuhui, who had gone down to deliver the news.

“You bought it for 680 million? Then… I should be able to get almost all of my deposit back?”

I nodded.

Though it was close, he would know himself that there was no longer a risk of losing the entire amount.

He spoke with the most comfortable expression he’d had since the auction began.

“Yes. The bakery wasn’t included in the distribution, and there might be a slight shortage due to auction costs and additional taxes on overdue national taxes, but if you’re planning to vacate, I’ll cover the difference for you.”

If there’s a small shortage, I’ll just give it to him separately, no big deal.

“Oh, really?”

His face brightened even more at my words.

Song Wonjong, completely relieved, looked like he was about to burst into tears for an entirely different reason than before.

After all, it’s common to spend a little extra to get tenants to move out after winning an auction.

I had specifically bought this building because both the academy and restaurant were planning to leave anyway, so I could just think of it as paying a hundred or two hundred thousand more.

“I’ll move out right when you want me to. Thank you, building owner!”

I scratched my head.

The title “building owner” was embarrassing, and his excessive bowing as if he was about to prostrate himself was too much.

You could tell how desperately Song Wonjong had been living – you’d believe he aged ten years in just one month.

With my current financial perspective after readily spending 680 million, I wondered if 50 million was really worth risking one’s life over… but I too had a past where I rode the subway from Incheon to Yangju just to earn a few hundred thousand won more in tutoring fees.

I simply patted Song Wonjong’s back quietly.

“Hup, thank goodness. Thank… urgh! Thank you.”

“Oh my, do you feel like vomiting again?”

“Keurk! Cough, cough!”

Was the emotional excitement too overwhelming?

Just like when his stress had peaked recently, Song Wonjong complained of nausea.

“There’s no one in the men’s restroom!”

Seol Yuhui quickly guided him to the restroom.

“Kek! Kehek! Keuk!”

Song Wonjong rushed straight to our clinic’s restroom, but that alone couldn’t calm him down.

He suffered for quite a while, his sounds echoing all the way outside.

“Are you okay? Did you vomit?”

Just moments before, I had been grinning happily about becoming a building owner, but when Song Wonjong came out clutching his chest, my identity as a Korean medicine doctor quietly raised its head.

“I’m sorry. I caused trouble with those unpleasant sounds.”

“Not at all. It’s natural when you’re not feeling well.”

“Urgh… I felt like vomiting but didn’t actually throw up. I’ve been like this lately, haha. But now that the deposit issue is resolved, I think I’ll get better soon.”

Even as Song Wonjong said this, he kept tapping his chest.

Not “I’m fine” but “I think I’ll get better.”

Moreover, just his grimacing expression showed the pain wasn’t ordinary.

“Your chest feels tight, doesn’t it?”

I asked while leading him to the examination room.

“Oh, no. The weight on my heart has completely lifted with the auction news.”

Yet Song Wonjong obediently followed me.

We couldn’t keep chatting in front of the desk, and we had reached a consensus that treatment was needed regardless.

“If it were purely a mental issue, you might get better that way… but mind and body interact with each other. Please sit over here for a moment.”

I sat at the desk to properly examine him.

Even though it was my day off, I couldn’t just throw someone I knew and whose situation I understood at Hwang Sanghun for treatment.

“Do you feel a burning pain in your chest?”

“Ah, yes. I do.”

Song Wonjong answered while looking down. Why is he reading my expression like that?

“I’ve been feeling like something is rising from my stomach to my esophagus for the past few days.”

“I see.”

“You’ve been coughing a little since last time, but there are no cold symptoms, right?”

“Yes. It’s probably just from feeling stuffy. There’s no runny nose or fever.”

Combining the symptoms I had observed so far and what he just complained of.

One particular condition came to mind.

“You didn’t vomit this time, but there was some at first, wasn’t there?”

“…At first, whatever I ate would come right back up. I couldn’t swallow food at all.”

I was somewhat aware of that too.

From the very first time we gathered with the people from floors 1, 2, and 3, Song Wonjong had complained of nausea.

I had brought him to the clinic that very day for acupuncture and recommended he take medicine if it continued.

As expected, his condition wasn’t good afterward, so he frequently left work to his part-timer to receive acupuncture, but he didn’t take herbal medicine.

Since money problems were the cause, he felt that no matter what treatment he received, he wouldn’t get better until the deposit issue was resolved.

With such a clear external factor, it wasn’t entirely wrong, so I didn’t insist strongly either.

It was a problem that would be solved as long as I won the building at an appropriate price.

But it seemed that repeatedly vomiting several times had secondarily caused a condition.

“From what I can see, the burning chest sensation and dry cough all seem like symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease. When you kept vomiting, stomach acid refluxed and caused inflammation in your esophagus.”

“Oh?”

Song Wonjong’s eyes widened.

He agreed that mental problems had caused some kind of physical illness. But the condition was beyond what he had imagined.

“I thought it might be hwabyeong or something like that.”

“It’s not typical hwabyeong symptoms. There’s naturally accompanying tension due to emotional causes, but as you said, that fundamental cause has been resolved, so you’ll get better.”

While people generally refer to chest tightness as hwabyeong, there are strict diagnostic criteria for it.

At one point, it was even introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a Korean cultural syndrome.

Currently, Song Wonjong’s treatment focused more on the esophagus than that aspect.

“I thought reflux esophagitis only happened from lying down right after eating… but thinking about it, vomiting like this would be much worse.”

Song Wonjong clutched his chest tightly.

“How do you treat that? Do I need to take medication?”

That depends on the case.

If the body is too weak and digestive function itself has declined, or if hwabyeong like what Song Wonjong mentioned is the problem, medication is almost essential.

“Taking it would certainly be good.”

Whether for controlling inflammation or preventing reflux, combining medication would naturally be helpful.

But is it absolutely necessary?

“Then…”

“Take anti-inflammatory medication for just a few days. I’ll try to control the reflux with acupuncture. Since the habitual vomiting has already improved, we can expect natural recovery of the lower esophageal sphincter as well.”

Not necessarily.

Because I could reverse the habitualized reflux pattern with acupuncture treatment alone.

There are two treatment goals for reflux esophageal disease.

Treat the esophageal wall damaged by stomach acid that has refluxed so far.

And normalize digestive function to prevent further reflux.

As long as he trusts and follows my treatment, success is entirely possible.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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